by Paul Elliott
Baking
We are lucky to have fragments of carbonized loaves from Iron Age Glastonbury to study. After analysis the loaves were found to contain fragments of wheat, hulled barley, wild oat, chess (brome grass), and a seed of common orache. It seems the loaves were unleavened, in fact the ‘bread’ had probably been made up as a stiff porridge, rolled into balls, flattened and then baked. The presence of wild oats and orache seeds indicate that ‘weeds’ must have grown within the Glastonbury wheat fields and were harvested incidentally, rather than as a crop in their own right. Archaeologists in Sweden have uncovered Viking flatbreads within cremation burials that also included a variety of mixed cereals, from flax seeds to barley, bean flour to wild oats. Multigrain flatbreads like this may have been the product of sloppy weeding, but we must remember that there were no gourmet chefs in the Bronze Age or Iron Age, and no Mrs Beeton, either, to whom roundhouse cooks could turn. Families survived on what they could grow. Although recipes were probably planned in advance, using ingredients planted many months previously, the multigrain flat bread must have been eaten when supplies were meagre and ‘any and all’ cereals were fed into the quern.
How is bread baked without an oven? The answer to that is: ‘any way you can’. We have already seen how ash cake is baked directly in the embers of the hearth, with ash from the fire piled on top. Dough could also be placed on to a flat stone next to the fire, and as the fire heated the stone, the bread was baked. Both Scandinavia and Britain share a bakestone tradition, since their cold and damp climates favour crops like barley and oats, cereals that lend themselves well to unleavened baking. Many surviving recipes combine two or more cereal grains due to the ancient practice of sowing multiple crop types at a time.
Although leavened bread was known to the Gauls, much of what was eaten in the Celtic world was unleavened flatbread. This baked quickly and easily on hot stones, unlike leavened bread, which required a steady heat from all sides. Perhaps the limited number of Iron Age bread ovens were dedicated to baking these leavened loaves. More likely, those communities using leaven in their bread would have resorted to pot baking, where the dough is placed on a ceramic plate in the embers of the hearth, with a pot inverted to cover it. Ashes and embers were then piled on top of the pot, which heated the ceramic and then baked the bread.
Leaven
Before yeast was identified by Louis Pasteur as a living organism and the agent in fermentation, the ancient method of raising dough involved the use of leaven. Leaven is a little piece of dough saved from the last baking session that is then added to the next batch. This reserve is known as a starter or a sourdough. Essentially, the leaven is a nursery for yeast and if kept topped up with lumps of newly made dough, can survive for months, years, and even decades. Canadian trappers and gold-seekers all cultivated their own sourdoughs, and it was said that these starters were handed down through the generations. The Roman writer Pliny recorded the use of leaven in Rome:
The leaven is prepared from the meal that is used for making the bread. For this purpose, some of the meal is kneaded before adding the salt, and is then boiled to the consistency of porridge, and left till it begins to turn sour. In most cases, however, they do not warm it at all, but only make use of a little of the dough that has been kept from the day before.
Pliny, Natural History, 18.26
Mix a small amount of spelt flour with warm water and mix to create a rather wet dough. This must be formed into a ball and a deep indentation made in its centre. Before pouring a little warm water into this hollow, the top of the dough is scored crossways with a knife. Set aside at room temperature for a few days, but check on the leaven regularly. Add a little flour or warm water as needed to maintain the same consistency. It should be developing a ‘yeasty’ or sour aroma. Soon the leaven will swell and split, which indicates that fermentation has taken place and that it is ready to be used as a source of yeast when making bread dough. Keep it inside a small clay jar and cover with a piece of cloth tied around at the top. Leaven will be susceptible to cold or frost and in prehistory must have been kept warm near the fire or (like those hardy Canadian pioneers) taken to bed.
To use the leaven, pull away three-quarters of the dough and drop into the mixing bowl before making up a fresh batch of bread dough. Remember to replace what has been taken with fresh flour and water. A healthy starter must be used once a week, with the missing dough replaced with more flour and water. This allows the yeast to flourish. In the roundhouse, this would not have been a problem, since bread-making was a daily occurrence.
Beaker Bread
This is leavened pot bread, baked in the embers. We call it Beaker Bread after the most famous and elegant of prehistoric pottery, the Bronze Age Beaker, although those cups were used only for drinking and certainly not for baking!
•500 g spelt or emmer flour
•15 g leaven
•1 tsp Sea salt
•About 250 ml milk and water mixed
The dough will stick like glue to the inner surface of the two pots unless they have first been sealed. Either smear the inside of the pots with butter, or temper them with a coat of hemp or flax oil and heat in the embers. Do this two or three times to fully treat the earthenware. Next make up a dough with the flour, salt, water, milk, and leaven (use modern dried yeast if replicating this recipe). This is prehistoric cookery and the amounts are only guides, so add only a little water at a time to the mixture. Leave to rise in a warm place for half an hour and then knead thoroughly. Leave the dough to stand once more, this time for around an hour. Divide the dough up, with each portion allotted to a separate earthenware plate. Next, place a large ceramic cook pot over each plate and stand near the fire for another thirty minutes. You can then place the pots carefully onto a bed of embers. Pile ashes and embers onto the sides and top of the pots as you are able. Bake this way in the hearth for at least forty-five minutes, though be ready to put the pots back into the fire should the bread turn out to be under baked.
Dobunni Bread
You might notice some similarity between the Glastonbury flatbread, mentioned earlier, to ugali, the porridge-like cereal food cooked today in East Africa. Whereas ugali is eaten straight from the pan, however, the Iron Age bread that was discovered intact at the Glastonbury lake village was cooked into a porridge and then baked on a hot stone. In this it was very similar to Yorkshire riddle bread, which is traditionally cooked as a porridge and left overnight before baking on a hot bakestone.
Dobunni bread is my own version of the flat bread that was eaten on the Somerset Levels and is named after the powerful Celtic tribe that lived nearby, the Dobunni. It smells and tastes a little like a Staffordshire oatcake.
•200 g spelt wheat flour
•200 g barley meal
•100 g oatmeal
•25 g ground flax or poppy seed
•1 tsp Sea salt
•About 250 ml water
Over the fire, make up a thick porridge with the wheat flour, barley meal, and oats. Grind up the flax seeds and add them to the pot. When ready, spoon the mixture onto a plate and then leave it overnight in a warm place. Next day, add a little salt to the dish and then drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a hot stone that is sat across the hearth. Pat these down so that each flat bread is as thin as it can possibly be without falling apart. Bake each side of the Dobunni bread for ten minutes (although this will vary depending on the temperature of the embers and the thickness of the bakestone—always check the bread before removing it from the stone).
Celtic Flatbread
Simply flour and water, this is a basic prehistoric flatbread.
•250 g spelt flour
•1 tsp sea salt
•About 150 ml water
Mix the flour, water, and salt into a dough and knead well. Next, roll the dough into a thick sausage and divide up into half a dozen equal portions. Rolł
each of these out as thinly as the dough will allow. It may seem natural to roll out the flatbreads as perfect circles, but the shape required is determined by your bakestone. If rectangular, then your flatbread needs to be something resembling that shape in order to fit.
Lay the flatbread onto a hot stone by the fire and bake it there on both sides for three to four minutes. Take care not to burn the bread and check frequently.
Haverbread
Haverbread is a traditional Yorkshire oatcake, baked on a hot stone or griddle over the fire. The term haverbread may come from the Norse word hafrecreed (‘oat porridge’) and the word, at least, probably arrived in Britain with the Norsemen who colonized much of the north.
•150 g oatmeal
•1 tsp sea salt
•2 tsp melted bacon fat or lard
•About 100 ml water
Mix the oatmeal, salt, and water together, then pour in the melted bacon fat or lard. If it is inconvenient to melt the fat, then mash it up with a spoon or a knife (there were no forks in British prehistory). Stir well and continue to add water until a stiff paste is formed. Break the mixture in two and on a flat surface (dusted with oatmeal) roll both into balls, then roll these out until they are around half a centimetre thick. Check that your two haverbreads will fit onto your bakestone and then bake for around three to four minutes until they are nicely browned. Turn them halfway through the baking process.
Blaanda Bread
This is another recipe with Norse connections, this time originating from the Shetland Islands. Blaanda bread is very similar to Dobunni bread, but instead of using water it is instead made with full fat milk. Add a drizzle of honey and a knob of butter to the mixture and elevate this bread from farming staple to chieftain’s treat.
Beer Bread
Alcohol and bread have a close and ancient relationship, since the fermentation of barley or wheat is central to both processes. There must have been a degree of overlap, where the yeast in one process helped to kick start the fermentation in another. The ancient writer Pliny remarks that:
In Gaul and Spain, where they make a drink by steeping [grain] … they employ the foam which thickens upon the surface as a leaven, hence it is that the bread in those countries is lighter than that made elsewhere.
Pliny, Natural History, 18.12
People of Gaul, which in Pliny’s day was under Roman rule, may have eaten Roman-style bread. His comment should certainly not be taken to suggest that all Gauls, or indeed all Celtic peoples, regularly ate leavened bread.
•250 ml beer dregs (brown ale is best)
•400 g spelt flour
•1 tsp sea salt
•2 tsp honey
Leave the beer uncovered for a day or so before using in this recipe. When ready to bake, mix the flour with the beer. Knead gently then put aside in a warm place for two hours. Later, add the salt and honey, kneading thoroughly once again. Add more water or flour as needed to maintain the correct consistency. Bake the bread just like Beaker Bread, described above.
Celtic Bean Cakes
Not exactly bread, these flat bean cakes are baked on a hot stone, just like haver cakes or flatbread.
•60 g butter
•250 g processed Celtic beans
•1 small cup of chopped hazelnuts
•Bunch of chopped chives
•1 tsp sea salt
•1 egg
•A little flour
The beans, if dried, should be soaked overnight and then drained. Cook the beans until tender, drain the water and add the hazelnuts as well as the chopped chives and sea salt. Beat the egg and then add that, too. Mix well, adding a little flour as needed to create a nice, stiff mixture that is not too sloppy and wet. Once the right consistency is reached, shape portions into small flat cakes and place on a hot bakestone. Turn midway through cooking.
Malted Bread
The process of malting involves soaking wheat or barley grains until they sprout, then baking them, and grinding the dried sprouts into malt. Malt gives this bread its own distinctive flavour.
•500 g spelt flour
•1 cup of wheat malt
•1 tsp sea salt
•About 250 ml water
Add the malt and sea salt to the flour then begin mixing, all the time adding water until the right consistency is reached—neither too sticky nor too dry. Knead well and then break into fist-sized balls that you can roll out until they are perhaps a half-centimetre thick. Bake these on a hot stone for ten minutes each side, but check the bread frequently.
Flax Bread
•200 g spelt wheat
•50 g flax meal
•1 tsp sea salt
•About 100 ml water
Follow the instructions for baking Malted Bread (above), but substitute the cup of wheat malt for a small amount of flax meal.
Autumn Bread
This is a sweet bread than can be baked in the late summer or autumn.
•500 g spelt flour
•1 large cup of blackberries
•Half cup of chopped hazelnuts
•200 g honey
•About 250 ml water
Mix the flour with the salt, hazelnuts, and blackberries; add water little by little, stirring continuously in order to make a dough that is not too dry or wet. Add the honey at this stage. The blackberries bring with them a lot of juice and care must be taken not to let the mixture get too sloppy; if it is, then add a little more flour. Once a satisfactory dough has been produced, it should be broken up into small cakes, rolled out and placed onto a hot bakestone. Depending on the temperature of the stone and the thickness of the flatbreads, they should be ready in ten to twenty minutes. Check the underside for scorching, and turn the bread halfway through baking.
10
The Clay Pot
Pottery is an invention that accompanied agriculture and the domestication of animals. Although there is no technical reason why the hunter-gatherers of Star Carr could not take river clay and fabricate cooking pots of their own, the mobile lifestyle of the Mesolithic tribes was at odds with the heavy, fragile nature of the earthenware containers.
Archaeologists have imagined hunters cooking their meat on wooden spits, or over the embers of their camp fires. They have also suggested that meat could be cooked in leather bags hung over the fire, an idea that may sound farfetched, but certainly has parallels in human history. The Greek writer and historian Herodotus recorded the habits of the Scythian nomads, living in southern Russia around 450 BC:
As Scythia is utterly barren of firewood, a plan was contrived for boiling the flesh, which is the following: after flaying the beasts, they take out all the bones, and (if they possess such gear) put the flesh into cauldrons. If they do not happen to possess a cauldron, they make the animals’ stomachs hold the flesh and pouring in a little water, lay the bones under and light them. The bones burn beautifully; and the stomach easily contains all the flesh when it is stripped from the bones, so that by this plan your ox is made to boil himself…
Herodotus, Histories, 4.61
Settled family life in the Neolithic focussed around the hearth and here the clay cook pot came into its own. Now a number of ingredients could be combined and cooked together to form stews, soups and broths reliably and conveniently. From beef bourguignon to Lancashire hotpot, Chinese egg drop soup to Irish stew, the legacy of the clay cooking pot remains with us today.
Pottery Types
Pottery for much of prehistory served as a method of cooking and for the storage of foods and liquids. The earliest pots of the Neolithic were plain and round-bottomed in shape, but over time impressed decoration began to appear on these bowls. For much of the period two styles dominated—Peterborough ware, with its thick, coarse clay walls, heavy rims, and lots of impressed decoration, and grooved ware, whic
h adopted a simple bucket shape with grooved ornamentation running in geometric patterns. Although Peterborough ware is often found at burial sites, grooved ware is always found within domestic contexts and because of this we can be sure that it served as a Neolithic cookpot or storage jar. Beakers arrived in Britain at the start of the Early Bronze Age and these fine, handsomely decorated drinking vessels may have been used for drinking mead or beer.
Fashions in cook pot design continued to evolve in the Bronze Age with so-called food vessels, which featured heavy bevelled rims, and with the cinerary urns, of which the collared urns were the most widespread. Small decorated pots often labelled as incense or ‘pygmy’ jars were also used in the Bronze Age and Jane Renfrew believes these little jars might have held salt, the trade in which developed at around this time. They might just as easily have held butter, edible plant seeds or leaven. With metal now available, some of the wealthiest families could boast cauldrons made of sheet bronze, carefully riveted together. Cauldrons continued to be made in the Iron Age and were complimented with iron firedogs and even iron and bronze bowls. Yet pottery continued to be used by the masses and during the early Iron Age these designs seem to have been imitations of those found on the continent. Through time a variety of different regional styles began to develop; in the south of Britain the vertical-sided saucepan ware pots were popular. Even these displayed great variety in profile and decoration from one site to another. By the start of the first century BC the potter’s wheel appeared in Britain, bringing some uniformity to the pottery styles of the Late Iron Age. Handmade pottery did not disappear altogether, though, as finds of Glastonbury Ware in the south west indicate.
